Good morning, everyone.
The February 11th, 2022 regularly scheduled meeting of the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights and Culture Committee will come to order.
It's 9.32 a.m.
I'm Tama Morales, chair of the committee.
Will the clerk please call the roll?
Council Member Lewis?
Present.
Council Member Strauss?
Present.
Vice Chair Sawant?
Present.
Chair Morales?
Here.
or present.
Thank you, Devin.
Uh, colleagues, Councilmember Nelson did inform my office ahead of time that she will be absent.
So please let the record show that her absence is excused.
If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.
Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.
So I want to start with three things quickly, and then at this point, we don't have anybody signed up for public comment.
I'll give it just a few minutes while I cover the agenda, and then we'll go to public comment to see if anybody has signed up.
So we've got three things on the agenda today.
We will hear from the Office of Arts and Culture on their 2022 work plan.
We've got two appointments – reappointments to the Human Rights Commission.
And then we will have a briefing from the Department of Education and Early Learning about the rollout of their youth-led social justice grant.
For my colleagues, I want to just share with you briefly there was a technology issue that resulted in dozens of students receiving notification that they had been awarded grants when they had not.
I heard about this from constituents who were concerned that young people were very confused and really unsure of their status as recipients.
So I want to thank Director Chappelle and his team for being very responsive to this question and concerns, answering my questions, and in being prepared to come before the committee today.
One of council's key responsibilities is providing oversight of how our departments function and how they provide good service to our neighbors.
So in the spirit of transparency and providing that good governance, today we'll hear from Deal about what happened and really about how the department plans to ensure transparency about these mistakes so that we can prevent them again.
and also so that we can repair the harm done to the young people who sought to participate in the program and understand where we are with that.
So with that, I will move to public comment.
I still do not see anybody signed in.
Is that correct?
There are currently no public comment registrants.
Okay, so I will open and close the public comment period.
And we can move on to the first item on the agenda.
Devin, will you please read item one into the record?
Agenda item one, 2022 Office of Arts and Culture Work Preview for briefing and discussion.
Thank you.
So is Director Ali Barnes on?
I don't believe I see her.
I see Ashraf Hasham.
Ashraf, Mike Davis, and Tina Lapadula.
Yes, hello.
Thank you so much Council Member Morales.
Good morning.
Tina will not be joining us, but Mike and I are here with bells on.
We'd be happy to share our screen and tell you about what's coming up here at Arts.
Thank you.
I'm going to share my screen now.
Oh, you know what?
Let me get back to this top piece and we'll start it up.
All right.
Hello.
Thank you so much for having us here today.
We're gonna be talking today about some of the upcoming and current opportunities at the Office of Arts and Culture, offering to individual artists, to folks who work in arts education and creative youth development, as well as individual cultural workers.
And Mike will be talking about the cultural education funds from the Equitable Communities Initiative that we got out the door last year and that we're working this year to solidify.
Moving forward.
First thing we want to talk about is the individual artist grant called City Artist.
This year, of course, is 2022 and you'll see 2023 on the name of this slide.
It's because we're doing the work ahead of time to make sure artists get paid right when 2023 starts.
So this funding cycle is for this next couple of years.
It's a 2023 to 2024 grant.
Total funding is $180,000, and we have set funding amounts at $2,000, $5,000, and $8,000.
What's interesting about this program and part of the innovations towards equity that we have provided is that it's an artist-focused grant, not a project-based grant, as you'll find in many individual artist spaces.
It's focusing on the artist and their trajectory in their career.
Are they an early early in their career, are they mid-career, are they established?
Typically the panel looks at all three and gives awards across the board.
And we of course, we of course try and get our awards to folks who are representing the diverse cultural landscape of Seattle and focus on BIPOC communities first and foremost.
Typically 200 plus applications come in, 24 or so awards are awarded based on that spread.
And we do, alternating years of funding.
So this year we're doing dance, choreography, as well as music and composition and theater, including playwriting.
On the other years, we have filmmaking and media.
We have a few other art forms as well, visual arts being one of them.
So it's open now.
It's open until April 27th, 2022. I'll pause and then I'll move forward.
Thank you.
Yeah, go ahead and finish the presentation, and then we'll open it up if there's questions afterward.
Beautiful.
Thank you, Council Member.
All right, so the next one is another opportunity for individual artists called Artists Up.
It is a funder collaborative across agencies from the City of Seattle's Office of Arts and Culture to King County's 4Culture and the state's arts agency called ArtsWA.
And it's a focus on underrepresented artists statewide, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, artists with disabilities, and elders.
Based on community feedback from each of those constituencies, we moved forward with this program around mentoring artists of color, mentoring other artists of color.
That peer-to-peer mentoring is what these artists asked for.
And what we do is cover the time of the mentoring artists and make opportunities for the mentee artists.
This program this year is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
We're very excited to be able to scale up this program and have artists show up for each other.
We're going to be opening this program twice this year.
The first opens March 1st and the second will open in the fall.
Now we're going to get into the youth work of the office of arts and culture, mainly, there's there's a couple of opportunities open now one of which is the youth arts grant.
It is a two year grant of $12,000 per organization or individual teaching artists or.
It could also be social service agencies, degree-granting institutions as well.
This supports out-of-school time arts programs.
We also have, and you'll hear this next, in-school programs.
This is specifically after school, summer, those kind of programs.
And they prioritize, of course, young people from diverse socioeconomic and racial backgrounds.
And this is open to, like I said, these various types of constituencies.
This program opens March 7th, and it will be open for about six to eight weeks.
And then we will make decisions on funding by the time the fall arrives.
And finally, the Creative Advantage roster is open now.
The Creative Advantage roster, though it's not a funding program directly, it is a vetted list of culturally responsive teaching artists and community arts and cultural organizations that work in Seattle Public Schools and that receive city funding for that in-day school work.
These partners from the community provide integrated and cultural arts learning for students, and they also provide professional development for teachers.
And of course, the benefit of arts learning are many, some of which are exposing young people and teachers to different methods of expression and viewing the world.
This is mainly open to teaching artists, individuals, as well as community arts organizations and cultural institutions.
And the roster itself is about 125 partners deep, and we can be adding more and more annually as the program continues.
And I will now talk about Hope Corps, a brand new program at the Office of Arts and Culture based on federal funding and city support, in addition to the National Endowment for the Arts, where we also received some funding.
You'll see that on the right side of the slide here, the $1.5 million from city funds and $500,000 from the NEA.
This program really is connecting under and unemployed creative workers into the creative industries, and there's six focus areas that we're hoping individuals and groups to apply for projects for.
Those are public health, mental health and healing, food security, storytelling, media and journalism, arts education, and social cohesion and belonging.
The impact is 100 plus creative workers will be employed for up to six months and earning up to 12k for that six months and that does not include, for example, supplies and materials, that's really just the wage for the creative worker for that six months.
Types of work of this will include things like artists in residence, free theater, free music lessons, free courses at community centers, public arts like theater, music, writing, design.
There could be also WPA-style projects that capture this moment in history, including audiovisual written documentation, historical records, and theater, and other forms of creative expression as well.
And this also is open to projects that are currently already happening that already sustain the existing creative educational research and service work that supports any of these service areas.
Food security is a great example.
There's a ton of projects that came up during COVID.
around making sure we are helping each other be secure in our food needs and those projects are up for funding for this program as well.
Timelines looking late April to August is the sort of application through selection process and that is concurrent currently being refined as well.
I'm going to pass it over to my colleague Mike Davis to talk about the cultural education ECI funding.
Cultural Education Advisor for the Office of Arts and Culture.
So the Cultural Education Fund that we have was born from the Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force.
In 2021, they identified a $30 million budget for recommendations to invest in the BIPOC community in Seattle.
The Office of Arts and Culture was awarded $2 million in these funds.
So we put together a process to award organizations that were doing the work of cultural education in our communities.
The first thing we did was coordinate with internal arts staff.
We reached out to the Seattle Arts Commission.
We reached out to the Seattle Music Commission.
We circled back to ECI task force members.
We also engaged community members who had done work with our office, and we reached out to fellow city departments.
And through all of this communication, we were able to identify 100 organizations that were currently providing cultural education experiences for youth in the city of Seattle.
Using the criteria identified by the ECI task force, which was BIPOC-led organizations, organizations that served 75% BIPOC youth, and organizations that had deep community connections, we were able to cut that list of 100 organizations down to 66 organizations that directly met the ECI TF recommendations.
After that, we convened members from the arts community.
We had a couple of community members who, for a long time, have worked in arts, both as artists and as funders, as well as a couple ECI task force members themselves.
And we put them together for a selection panel.
And these folks came together, they did the deliberation, and they identified the organizations that would receive funding.
So in the end, our selection panel selected 29 organizations for funding.
Of that $2 million, we were able to award $1.85 million.
We had 12 organizations who were awarded $100,000, nine organizations awarded $50,000, and eight organizations were awarded $25,000.
And as you can see, this list, I mean, it's a very diverse list of organizations, and they all perform the work of cultural education in different ways.
For example, we have Look, Listen, and Learn TV.
They create programming, digital programming for preschoolers, for BIPOC preschoolers.
So it's basically like our own local version of Sesame Street.
We also have the Buffalo Soldiers of Seattle.
They take youth from urban neighborhoods in Seattle They take them out and they give them outdoor experiences as well as experiences in cultural education and learning about the histories of the Buffalo Soldiers.
It's a really cool organization and geeking out kids of color was a new one to our office.
and they are an organization that teaches BIPOC youth how to code in hopes that they will be able to get jobs that will allow them to live in their neighborhoods when they grow up.
Seattle is a big tech city, so they want to see BIPOC youth being a part of that.
So that's what we did for 2021. Right now, you know, we did the contracts at the end of the year.
The organizations are doing the work right now, and we also have $500,000 to award for 2022. So we're working internally to kind of build out what that process will look like.
We're engaging a lot of these organizations that you see in front of you right now.
And we're going to also work with community to build out another process for this $500,000.
And at the end of the year, we're hoping to do another funding process.
So if anyone has questions, feel free to let me know.
Thank you.
Okay.
Do I see any questions from colleagues for our friends at the arts department?
I've got a few questions.
Oh, I just saw director Allie Barnes.
Good morning.
How are you?
You're muted.
Still muted.
Welcome to technology difficulties.
My apologies, council member and colleagues.
One of the things I wanted, Raleigh Barnes, acting director of the Office of Arts and Culture.
One of the things I really want to emphasize in just even the last piece that we saw from this amazing partnerships, education and grants group is the cultural education grants that went out through the ECI.
The staff actually did this in three weeks, getting that money assigned in September of 2021. But it was important to get it out to the arts sector so that we knew that these 30 organizations would be able to open their doors beginning January 2022 and continue doing the work that they had been doing previously.
The efficacy of time and people and purpose and place is really driving this group that presented this morning, and I wanted to publicly acknowledge that.
I appreciate that.
It's good to know that when we have the right leadership, we can get money out the door quickly.
That's very important.
So I have a couple of questions.
Just for my own clarification, with the Hope Corps program, my understanding was that that is ARPA funds and that part of the selection criteria would be organizations that could demonstrate some loss due to COVID.
Am I understanding that right?
With all the ARPA funds, the federal guidelines will be applied to the application process.
You're correct.
OK, I just wanted to make sure I understood that.
And then we get to my other.
list here.
Okay, so this is really helpful just to show kind of the breadth of ways that we as a city are funding artists.
I think it's important to demonstrate the different funding opportunities, you know, to show support for cultural workers who are really contributing to the vitality of the city.
I want to congratulate you all on getting, I've already forgotten his name, but the artist who did the MLK mural, getting him to come up from Mexico to do those repairs.
I think that was really important and I'm so happy to see that that is going to be going to be repaired and that he was willing to come up and do it.
And then I also just wanna acknowledge the mentoring program that you are supporting, particularly now when we're talking about people who have been so acutely impacted by COVID, providing support, particularly for black and brown artists, for people, artists experiencing disabilities or other kind of underrepresented folks, having that, for our mentoring opportunity to tap into and providing support for that I think is really important.
So I just want to thank you all for the work that you're doing there.
And realizing that, you know, the cultural education work, as we're talking about ethnic studies in school, and really trying to address the cultural erasure that's happened in our education system.
programs like this are really important to make sure that we're supporting young people and making sure that they feel seen and are seen in our community.
So I want to thank you all for the work that you're doing and really appreciate that.
I did want to touch base on a couple of things that we spoke about in our monthly meeting but that aren't addressed here.
If you could provide an update on the cultural space agency, PDA, and we had talked about, I know you were looking for a recovery manager to coordinate with the Department of Neighborhoods and provide that sort of interdepartmental coordination.
Can you give us an update on those two things?
I can give you, if I might, Council Member, I can give you a very brief update.
The Cultural Space Agency is just, again, flourishing.
And we were just so proud to be able to send out a contract to the agency for the BASE program, which really impacts so many organizations and young people and people of color who want to learn about what it takes to to memorialize and keep cultural space.
So we actually moved the base program for the PDA's contract to the PDA.
And then arts is funding that program in 2022 with $60,000, as well as a $10,000 support for a base network, a new website, if you will.
Additionally, we got out $500,000 to the PDA in 2021. One, to support the startup again, and there will be an additional $250,000 forthcoming in 2022. And so it's great to put joint signatures on a letter to joint constituency about a program like BASE that's really important to them in that regard.
The good news on the recovery manager is that we're now in deliberations and looking at references that we actually went through the process and Seattle Human Resources was so, I mean, they're amazing.
How they do all of this is just kind of amazing to watch and we're really grateful that we have their support.
So we're well on our way into that process and we'll be making some other determinations shortly and we'll bring those to your office as well.
Perfect, thank you.
Okay, um, colleagues, are there any questions for our friends at the arts department Councilmember Strauss I think I saw your hand.
Yeah, thank you, Chair, I have no questions because I think that this was a thorough presentation and I really appreciate everyone's work.
Having been a member of AmeriCorps for two years, the HOPE Corps program really resonates with me in a deep and meaningful way.
I'm very excited about it.
Please never hesitate to let me know what I can do to help support you.
And then also acknowledging Director Allie Barnes, your work with, we know that many museums and institutions were able to receive COVID and ARPA funding, and there were some that were left out.
And I just wanna highlight the work that Director Allie Barnes is doing right now to help me and all of us identify who those organizations were that were left out and how we can continue to support them.
So no questions, just a big thank you, kudos, and keep up the great work.
perfect thank you councilmember Strauss.
I don't see any other questions so I want to thank you all for for joining us this morning and we will move on to the next agenda item.
Thank you.
Okay Devin could you please read item two into the record?
Agenda item two, department of education and early learning youth social justice grant briefing for briefing and discussion.
Terrific, thank you very much.
So I want to welcome Director Ali Barnes and Marissa and I want to just again state before you get started that we are here to shine a light on some of the mistakes that were made and to learn from them not to point fingers.
My hope is that we can look into the processes more deeply to see what changes we need to consider and to just get some clarity on what happened and what we can do to talk to make sure that we are serving constituents and especially that we are serving young people well.
So I'm going to ask you to, I know you've got a presentation, so please go ahead.
Thank you.
Good morning, Council, Councilmember Morales and other distinguished Councilmembers present today.
As you all know, I'm Dwayne Chappelle, proud director here at the Department of Education and Early Learning, and I just want to just thank you for this opportunity just to update you on DEEL's Youth Social Justice-led mini-grants.
We're going to share, as you mentioned, Council Member Morales, just the challenges we face implementing this grant and how we've been able to work through them to fund all 82 youth-led projects and then inform you of our next steps.
Next slide, please.
So what I would like to do here is just give a little background and just some quick background and timelines on the youth-led social justice mini grant.
So this opportunity originated as a joint effort by council and the executive office in response to hate crimes and bias incidents that was occurring in early 2021. And to give our youth opportunities for civic engagement and leadership on topics that they are deeply passionate about, excuse me, our youth, Had the autonomy to develop their own projects, and we said award amounts ranging from 500 to 8000 per applicant.
And what you'll see here is this slide show shows the initial considerations.
That went into the design of the grant and really guided deals, internal processes.
You can also know that a lot of intentionality and youth engagement actually went into this into the grants design and how we can make this the best possible experience for our young scholars.
And through a series of virtual meetings deal, what we did, we had internal work groups that engaged the Seattle Youth Commission and youth interns to really co-design this opportunity.
There was a public survey that was conducted for our youth to find out more about their interests and accessibility needs.
With their feedback, we actually designed the application and the application process to consist of a short three-page application accepting both written and video submissions.
And the application included questions asking you to basically just describe the intended impacts of their projects and how their proposals would be COVID safe.
Our intent really ultimately was for it to be youth-friendly, low barrier, and non-competitive.
Next slide, please.
Thank you.
So, now, what this, what this slide provides ultimately is just an overview of the grant timeline.
So, I mentioned this a moment ago, so the summer of 2021 was all about youth engagement to inform the design of the grant.
The grant was released on in September, followed by the covert, say, virtual information and technical assistance sessions.
The applications you see, we're due on October 25th.
And the application review period required an extension of the timeline and was completed in January.
On February 1st, we issued a miscommunication to applicants about awards, which we'll cover in detail in just a moment.
And, you know, our message, as you mentioned earlier, it caused confusion amongst applicants and we knew that we had to act quickly.
To address this error.
So DEEL, we promptly consulted with Mayor Harrell, who directed DEEL to issue a new statement with just a commitment to fully funding all applicants after learning about them.
So, on February 7th, all applicants were notified that they will receive full funding for their proposals.
And what I'm going to do now is I would like to invite Marissa Roussel, she's our interim director of policy and communications, to discuss our process for notifying applicants.
Thank you, Jane.
So I'll share a few slides just about the internal process of the application.
What you see on this slide is the timeline of applicant notification that occurred starting last week.
For this process and as a standard for deal, we issued an email notification informing applicants of their funding awards.
Last Tuesday was when this miscommunication occurred where all applicants were informed that they would be funded and then we retracted that email and issued corrected information.
What we heard from community as well, of course, was the confusion this caused, the burden it placed on adult allies and fiscal sponsors to help youth understand what they were reading from a city-led funding process.
And therefore, we made some pivots in how we're approaching communication moving forward.
So on Monday, Director Chappelle issued a video statement that we sent to applicants by email.
trying to take a more relational and personal approach to our communication with them.
And our staff has started making individual phone calls to all of the applicants to first make sure that they received Director Chappelle's video and that they understand that it means that funding has been available, been made available to support their projects.
And we are also confirming the information in their applications with regards to the amount of funds requested and clarifying if they have a fiscal sponsor or if they still need to have a fiscal sponsor identified.
As part of the original The original grant release, we had a selection process identified in that application and that's reflected on your slide in this purple table.
When we sent the email to applicants last week, we informed them that this table was not used and that the department had moved to a random selection process.
So I just want to briefly touch on why we made that change, as well as remind Council that neither of these processes are currently used, and Steel has made the new funding commitment to support all projects.
So our initial intent with this rubric was to prioritize our limited $100,000 in funding to communities most impacted by racial hate and bias, as well as to direct resources to address root causes of those acts.
And what we found when we applied this rubric, we did review all applications, each application received a score, was that we had more than 50 applications who received the maximum points.
So our rubric did not work as designed.
Therefore, we pivoted to randomization, which we internally discussed and found to be the most equitable approach given that there was not variation in the points awarded, and that we wanted to maintain our commitment to a youth-friendly, inclusive, and non-competitive process.
So again, this random selection was what was in that February 1st communication, which we have now corrected with the video commitment to all applicants, indicating that they will receive funding.
briefly a little bit about our applicants.
The majority were ages 14 to 17. And we were also really excited to see 15% of applicants were ages 12 to 13. The majority did identify a fiscal sponsor in their application.
And at that time, around 20% also said they did not have a fiscal sponsor.
So later in the presentation, we'll talk about the support the department will be providing in this space.
And then, as Director Chappelle mentioned, we did allow video submission.
And it was great to see that 20% of applicants chose to apply in that format.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you, Marissa.
So, as I mentioned earlier, I just I just want to make sure I say that, you know, I deeply regret the mistake that our team made with the with the initial notification.
As a father of four amazing children, a former teacher who's taught hundreds and thousands of children, I know that we must, teacher and principal, we must do better by our young scholars.
They are our leaders.
Working with Mayor Harrell, we've collaborated to identify a path forward that is in the best interest of our dedicated young leaders.
And I am so excited that we will now be funding all projects with over $525,000.
I'm just proud of our city's commitment to continue and just our just our commitment to investing in our youth to advance racial justice and inclusion.
And this grant truly celebrates them and and shines a positive light on all of our communities.
The initial $100,000 comes from the FEP 2021, and the additional funds comes from the projected 2021 savings in K-12.
You will get a chance to see this reflected in a carry-forward request as part of the regular process.
There's no anticipated impacts to other programs at all.
And our youth, they really propose the diverse range of brilliant ideas, just advocating for social justice and uplifting their communities through art, as we just heard arts present, right?
Music, student conferences, community conversations, and many more.
Their leadership is invaluable in speaking out against hate and biases.
And it's just important that they are supported and included in our city strategy to address these urgent issues.
Next slide, please.
Excuse me.
So what I'm going to do now is talk about next steps and between like February and March.
So this was and it continues to be a learning process for us.
Although this has been challenging, we are improving our processes and we will be better for it.
Right now, we are working on creating opportunities for the young people to share how they want to be supported in this grant going forward and provide honest input about their experience.
And then from there, what we'll be doing, we'll be learning from our youth and we'll be, should I say, learning from our youth, it will be central to how we move forward and just build stronger relationships within the community.
We will be also working with the fiscal sponsors of each project to complete all paperwork that is required to issue the awards.
And if we learn that the youth do not have fiscal sponsors, we will be working with them to help find one.
We just remain committed to supporting our young scholars on this very important project, just to ensure that they have a positive experience and that they are successful in what they have set out to do.
Next slide, please.
So as we move forward, it's possible that new challenges may arise or they may need additional support in ways not yet identified, but we are committed to supporting our scholars the best that we can.
Today, my team We will begin making individual phone calls to applicants just to confirm details of their projects, their project proposals, and inquire about the support needed.
And we ultimately intend to develop just supportive resources they may need based on their feedback.
And I also, before we close this out, you can go to the next slide.
Please.
What I wanted to do is just really just provide some, just some primary, just initial reflections from deal.
We, we are implementing protocols now to prevent the risk of another era like this in the future.
We are putting some additional internal systems in place just to check for accuracy when it comes to communicating with our grant applicants.
And another reflection that we've learned is that we learned just that the adults in our community organizations and schools who support our scholars are key allies in this work.
and they should have the opportunity to inform our youth facing opportunities in addition to the youth themselves.
And I would say the last thing that I would like to share that we've learned is that we also learned that the fiscal sponsors should be secured early on to guarantee that all youth applicants can meet the grants requirement in a timely manner.
So I just wanted to make sure I shared that with the committee.
Go ahead.
You can go to the next slide, please.
And so, you know, as we stated earlier, we are excited that this process is ultimately resulting in being able to serve and positively impact those individuals who all of us, who we've all committed our lives to serving.
And we look forward to sharing more with you about the funded projects in the coming months.
as we continue to celebrate these young scholars for their social justice work that they are doing.
So I want to just, again, thank you for your time.
We are excited.
I'm excited to what is to come.
And we'll, if questions are needed, we'll take questions if you have them.
And then I'll pass it over to Chief Emery.
Thank you, Dr. Chappelle.
I just want to take a moment, Council Member Morales, to thank you for having me in this space.
And I'm just here to echo the messages from both Dr. Chappelle and Marissa that we will make it right for those kids.
Kids voices are what centers us and it's we're going to celebrate it and from our space.
We're going to make sure that deal is supported in rolling this process out and will continue to monitor and make this be a success story for our kids.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you also, Marissa and Dr. Chappelle.
I do have several questions.
So maybe I will start.
Well, so you talked a little bit about the creation, co-creation of the RFP itself.
It sounds like there was a lot of engagement with young people, but I think what I just heard you say at the very end was that maybe the youth advocates or the adult organizations weren't as involved and that might have helped create some of the challenge.
Is that?
Did I hear that right?
What I was saying was more so, so as we were developing this, we know that like the adult youth, yes, they So there was like a component of like, we learned that for an example, as I mentioned about fiscal sponsors should be secured early on to make sure that our youth applicants can have access to those.
So just using that for an example, that's just an example of something as we're reflecting, we're committed to continuous policy improvement and we just learned about that.
So that's just a key piece that's something that we learned from it.
Marissa, please feel free to add more if I leave anything out, okay.
So I want to go to slide five and talk a little bit about the selection process.
So you explained why you switched to the lottery system.
It sounds like the rubric that you had designed, the intent of which was to help you prioritize, didn't actually work.
And so that explains why you made that shift.
Can you talk a little bit about how that was explained to the recipients?
Because that was another issue that I heard as people were frustrated that it seemed to them like things sort of shifted midstream and they weren't aware of that.
Yes, thank you.
We heard that feedback as well.
So last week, the change was included in the email notification to applicants.
So that was how they were informed of the change in design.
So that cadence and that format for communicating a change in process is something we'll be looking at further and brainstorming alternative approaches to moving forward.
And then in terms of the design itself, I looked at that rubric and it had questions.
So, for example, you know, the how points were allocated by district.
You know, it's when I think about the sort of areas with For example, that have been identified as areas high risk for displacement, low economic opportunity, it's usually kind of North and South Seattle, you know, D5 and D2.
So I was surprised to see D5 sort of ranked lower, if you will.
Another question I had about the rating was how you could rate based on intersectionality.
So rather than prioritizing race over, for example, LGBTQ status, if there was a way to blend those two, because we know that many people struggle navigating multiple identities.
you know, clearly the way it was designed, you are understanding now wasn't quite right.
And I don't know how you go about fixing that or you'll just choose a different kind of selection criteria, but, or ranking criteria.
But I wonder if you have any thoughts about what, what about that design process didn't work.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Your reflections are similar to what, what we've learned internally.
Certainly the issue of intersectionality, was very present in the proposals we received from youth, and it speaks to their understanding of the issues that our city faces.
So no surprise from them there, but we did not anticipate that in this rubric, and that's part of why it did not work.
Moving forward, if DEEL were to do this again, another piece of feedback we've received is that our intention to have a non-competitive process actually doesn't resonate with many of the young people we've heard from.
So they felt like that undermines the value and the intentionality they put into their proposals.
So another early reflection is perhaps this does need to be competitive.
Perhaps it would need a panel of reviewers looking at the applications.
Our intention was to not be ageist in having adult staff reviewing the applications for quality.
But again, we're just learning a lot about how our intention mismatched with the needs of youth.
And we are sincerely eager to look at that more and find out how we could better meet their needs moving forward.
OK, thank you.
So I was going to go to slide six, but that last point you made takes me to slide seven, which is that one of the categories of applicants you identify as 12 to 13-year-olds, which is really cool to know that our 12 and 13-year-olds are applying for grants.
But it does make me wonder about how they were educated about things like this.
fiscal sponsorship.
My guess is that not many 12-year-olds have a fiscal sponsor.
So when you talk about being technically compliant with the grant, it seems that that was part of the issue, that they didn't have a sponsor identified.
And I'm wondering if it was mostly the younger set who didn't have that requirement.
Or do we know why they didn't have a sponsor identified?
Um, I don't have the data in front of me at this time, we could get it.
My reflection is that we did see applicants without a fiscal sponsor in all age ranges.
For those younger applicants, many of them did apply as part of a school.
And so there have been teachers reaching out to deal to help those younger applicants understand our communication.
So That's part of the intent of this next round of phone calls is to get clear about if someone had a fiscal sponsor or not, if they have a fiscal sponsor, who that is.
And so that deal can identify the adult allies helping the applicants so that moving forward, we can communicate with both the adults and the fiscal sponsor together.
I'm sorry, both the youth and the fiscal sponsor together.
OK.
So going back to slide six, the funding decision affected February 8th.
So $525,000, you said 100,000, that 100,000 was FEPP levy funding, is that right?
Yes, $100,000 was initially from the, yes, the K-12, yes.
K-12 funding.
And so all of it is actually coming from K-12 funding.
Yes, it is.
But $425,000 is carryover from last year.
So I'm glad to know that we can actually fund all of these students who worked really hard to get this done.
It does raise another question for me about why we had so much unspent funding last year in this program.
But maybe we can talk about that later.
So just wanted to make sure I understood where the money was coming from to be able to do this.
And then I think the last thing I wanted to mention here is it seems like communication challenges between sponsors and the department are being worked out, and I'm glad to know that our adult allies are willing to make sure that young people are understanding better what processes are needed in order for them to participate in these kind of grants.
I do think I want to add to the last slide, well, slide 10, the kind of process check, some parameters maybe on when it's okay to change a selection criteria.
You know, I would say not after putting in writing that things are going to be graded, judged one way.
Yeah, and I think maybe I haven't read all of the materials that were shared with young people about how these processes work, but, you know, how you explain in non-technical language about all of the requirements is obviously something I'm sure you're already considering, so.
Okay, well, I want to thank you all and see if my colleagues have any questions for our folks from DEEL.
I am Oh, Councilmember Strauss, please.
Thank you, Chair.
And thank you, Dr. Chappelle and Marissa.
Look, we're all human.
We make mistakes, things happen.
I think that what you demonstrated today, what you showed on how you reacted to making a human mistake demonstrates leadership.
It demonstrates your leadership and why people continue.
And I still have trust in you because so many people, when they make a mistake, try to hide it, put it under the rug, fix it, make sure nobody notices and move on.
It takes real leadership to confront it head on, speak directly to people, make the change and move forward.
So doing so in the light rather than trying to hide in the dark, it just continues to demonstrate why so many people in our city trust you.
So thank you to your team.
Thank you to you.
Let's keep doing good work.
Thank you.
Thanks, Council Member Strauss.
I'm sorry, I do have one more question.
I don't know, I don't think this is necessarily one-time funding, but is this, can you talk about how and whether there may be other opportunities for this kind of youth-led grant?
So as a, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
What were you saying, the last part?
I'm just curious about if this is kind of a pilot, a one-time opportunity, or if this is something that you anticipate being able to do again.
Yes, it was a one time opportunity.
First time that we've done something like this and we didn't and don't have any plans in the future to do anything like this.
So that's why this is why it's so important that we get it right because we're committed to just operational excellence and excellence for doing by our scholars.
So yes, this was a one time opportunity.
OK.
OK, well, thank you very much.
I'm glad we have found a way to support the students, the young people, and really do appreciate that you are here to help answer questions and clarify for our community what happened and how we're going to how we're going to resolve it.
So thank you all.
Thank you for being here.
Let's see.
OK, I am going to move to the next agenda item.
Devin, sorry.
Will you please read the next item into the record?
Agenda items 3 and 4, appointments 2094 and 2095. reappointment of Alan Naribo and Julie Ismail as members of the Seattle Human Rights Commission for terms to January 22nd 2024. For briefing discussion and possible vote.
Perfect.
Thanks very much.
Let's see.
I know Marta is here from Office of Civil Rights.
Marta are you here alone or is Janet with you as well.
You're muted.
Marta you're muted.
Still muted.
Sorry.
There we go.
Okay.
Okay.
Can I go ahead and start?
Yes, please go ahead.
Okay.
Hello and good morning.
My name is Marta Edelweiss, Civil Rights Advisory Commission liaison to the Seattle Human Rights Commission and Women's Commission.
and I work in the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.
And I will say a few words about the commission makeup and then present some information in support of our two reappointments this morning.
Thank you.
Excuse me.
The Seattle Human Rights Commission consists of 21 commissioners who live or work in Seattle and are appointed to serve as advisors to the mayor, city council, Seattle Office for Civil Rights, and many other city departments in the city.
and matters affecting human rights.
There are eight commissioners appointed by the mayor, eight by the city council, four by the commission, and the 21st appointment joins us as a youth commissioner, and it's called the Get Engaged Program.
I wanna note that we are starting our recruiting process to fill current vacancies, and so I want you to be alerted to that.
That's gonna be coming out soon.
So the first person I'd like to talk about today for her reappointment is Julia.
Julia started off on the commission as the only chair voted into office last year and led the commission into this year until two were voted at the retreat that we had a couple of weeks ago.
And that was on January 29th.
In her role as chair, she met with each of the commissioners one-on-one She led planning of the retreat and led some of the topics on the agenda.
She led the election process of the two new chairs.
And then we also have an appeals chair, the outgoing appeals chair, and a new incoming appeals chair that was voted on also at the retreat.
She helped with onboarding of a new commissioner who ended up being one of the co-chairs of the commission at that retreat.
Julia has been trained as a member of the appeals panel, along with all of the commissioners who come on board, we get them trained with the law department and our office do a training and get them acclimated into how to do that role.
You also help with updates of the bylaws that we currently review that are currently on review at the law department.
He helped organize and moderated the Seattle Human Rights Commission event on December 9th of 2021 last year, Overcoming Hate, Reflections on Healing Post 9-11.
Did some restructuring of the co-chair roles and responsibilities and defining each of the co-chair roles and what areas that they would actually work and be responsible for.
Like she is over the administrative side, We have another commissioner over communications and another person over the five commission meetings.
Julia has been an active member and looks forward to continuing her work on the commission.
And we would certainly want to put her forward to be reappointed today.
And now to Alan.
Alan has consistently been attending meetings and doing work on the commission.
Each commissioner is responsible for taking minutes or being a timekeeper for the meeting and can always depend on Alan to help volunteer in those roles.
He attended the retreat and participated in the development of the work plan.
And I would like to note that while working in his role on the commission, Alan is currently a graduate student at the School of Social Work and Criminal Justice at the University of Washington Tacoma.
This is commendable to him Excuse me, I'm having a little trouble with my voice today.
Commendable for him to commit to the commission and attend graduate school.
So we're happy that he is able to fulfill that role and for all of his contributions.
Alan has also been involved in community mental health sector for several years and function in various capacities as a case manager, therapist, and program manager.
His interest in working in community development through public service and education is informed by the idea that the more information Seattle residents have about public policy that affects them, the more empowered they will be to overcome systemic oppression.
He is a passionate mental health advocate and believes in integrating mental health into daily living as a vehicle of self-empowerment for immigrant and minority populations.
He currently serves on the Criminal Justice Task Force on the commission, where he is using his expertise in mental health and social services to advocate for accountability in policing.
He also is a member of the Fellows Committee, which is a mentoring scholars program that does research and writing reports for the commission.
Alan also serves as a liaison to the Immigrant and Refugee Commission.
The Immigrant and Refugee Commission join our five commission meetings, which are four mandated meetings that we have in February, May, August, and November every year.
And we, as a collaboration with the Immigrant and Refugee Commission, we collaborate with them and work together on ways that the commission can see commonalities in their work.
and then work together on those.
So with that, I respectfully request that these two reappointments for Julia and Alan move forward to confirmation.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Sorry about my voice today.
That's all right.
There's a little sinus something in the air for me today, too.
Thank you very much.
Colleagues, these are reappointments.
Alan is a reappointment council position, and Julia is a commission appointment reappointment.
So I don't have any questions.
We've met with both of them in the past, and I think that it is commendable that they are willing to continue serving in this role and serving our neighbors.
Do any of my colleagues have questions for Martha?
Okay, seeing none, I will move that the committee recommends confirmation of appointments 02094 and 02095. Is there a second?
Second.
Second.
Second.
Thank you.
It's been moved and seconded.
Devin, will you please call the roll?
Council Member Lewis?
Yes.
Council Member Strauss?
Yes.
Vice Chair Sawant?
Yes.
Chair Morales?
Yes.
Four in favor?
Thank you.
The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the February 22nd full city council meeting.
Marta, I did have just a question for you.
Before you go, we have – if I understand, there are four vacancies on the Human Rights Commission that will – whose – the terms will end this summer.
So just so I understand, if you are able to recruit for those four vacancies, tell me how the appointment process will work and if they will have to then be reappointed after this summer, after the term ends.
Yes, they will have to be reappointed.
OK, so if we're able to fill those before.
July, oh yeah, yes, I remember I mentioned a little bit earlier that we were right in the process of doing the recruitment process right now, so we're on that.
Yeah, OK, very good.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, thanks very much.
Have a good day.
You too, bye bye.
Okay, let's see.
Colleagues, I just wanted to make a couple of closing comments and then see if there's anything for the good of the order.
So we had two departments presenting today.
First of all, I do think it's clear that we need to be more thoughtful in how we create funding opportunities and really how we set expectations for community members.
We heard from two departments today that are trying to accomplish really important equity work, but they're doing it with limited funding, and at least in the case of the youth grants and the cultural education for arts funding, those are one-time funds, one-time programs, and it really risks setting up community It raises expectations that may not be met.
It puts the burden on community members to engage in a process that might not actually be sustainable.
And I just want us to be aware of that, especially as we go into the new year and as we eventually we'll start approaching our budget season.
As a city, I feel like we are making some important shifts in thinking about what equitable funding looks like, particularly for communities that have historically been ignored or under-resourced.
We're moving in that direction and I think that's huge, but we also need to understand that our social equity commitments are only as strong as the financial commitments that come with them.
So if we're truly going to address the history of systemic racism in our city, if we're going to achieve the desired outcomes of greater health and greater prosperity for everyone in Seattle, I think we have to be unapologetic about shifting how we spend public dollars so that we're targeting investments in a way that really builds capacity and longevity for these programs that we're trying to set up so that we don't end up undermining the equity outcomes that we're looking for as a city.
So I do wanna thank our arts department again and thank the Department of Education and Early Learning for coming and sharing what they're doing, sharing the learning that they have made in some of these processes and really acknowledging the need to repair the harm that was done for our young people in this process.
I think it's important, and I'm glad to hear that's happening.
Are there any other comments or questions for the good of the order?
I don't see anything.
The next committee meeting will be Friday, February 25th at 9.30.
If there are no further questions, colleagues, then we are adjourned.
Have a good day, everybody.
Thank you.